Posts Tagged ‘Innovation’

17 August 2010

The 30,000 Foot View: How KLM stays “in-touch” with customers

by Jennifer Adams

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All posts by Jennifer Adams

I have always loved flying. Now, I don’t mean just the hurtling through space in a comfortable cabin with movies, wine and dinner at my discretion. I mean everything about it—from the preflight wandering of airport bookstores and people-watching—to the in-flight blissfully out-of-time, disconnected from the world, “me time” with no chiming BlackBerry or demanding email—to my ultimate safe arrival somewhere across the globe that always has me marveling things like: “Seven hours ago I was in London, now I am in New York—that is crazy!”

I have always loved flying. Now, I don’t mean just the hurtling through space in a comfortable cabin with movies, wine and dinner at my discretion. I mean everything about it—from the preflight wandering of airport bookstores and people-watching—to the in-flight blissfully out-of-time, disconnected from the world, “me time” with no chiming BlackBerry or demanding email—to my ultimate safe arrival somewhere across the globe that always has me marveling things like: “Seven hours ago I was in London, now I am in New York—that is crazy!”

How crazy that transportation across space and time is—from a sheer logistics standpoint—I never really thought about it until I began, three years ago, to manage for KLM its In touch Community of Elite flyers from the Netherlands, U.K., Germany, Norway and Sweden. Before then, I never spent much time considering how much thought goes into getting 300+ people to their destinations, on time, in comfort, fed and entertained, without incident. … But now, I arrive at the airport and ask myself, as KLM asks its members every day in the In touch Community: What does efficient boarding mean? What is important in an airport lounge? How is the food? … the seat comfort? … the entertainment? What would make me more loyal to this airline? And how would I bring innovation to the industry? Now, as I board my flight, sip my wine, eat my meal or simply watch the wheels alight on the ground of Schiphol, I can’t help but notice the details.

Charles Hageman, Research Analyst for KLM and the driving force behind the In touch Community, never forgets the details, as he meticulously ensures that Elite flyers’ answers to all those questions get funneled throughout the KLM organization, to over 200 different people across functions and roles. His next magic trick? Opening the community up to the larger Air France-KLM organization, and expanding community membership into France, Spain and Italy. I, for one, cannot wait for even more reasons to interact in the In touch …with Air France and KLM Community with fellow travelers and help guide the innovation of an industry and brand that has transported me—on time and in style—across the world.

Charles recently sat down with Tamara Barber at Forrester Research to discuss the origins and impact of the In touch Community. You can read that case study here and also watch a video below of Charles talking about the community:

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27 May 2010

Are You Treating Your Customers Like a Sustainable Resource?

by Debi Kleiman

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All posts by Debi Kleiman

Usually when you think of sustainability, you think of farming or the environment right? Well it’s really not just about what you eat; sustainability is a concept that is at the heart of how the most innovative companies in all industries are doing business today. It involves thinking about how to make the most of your business using the best of your resources and ensuring those resources are well taken of – that is, treated with respect, thoughtfulness and appreciation – whether those resources are money, time, or customers. And it makes sense that customers are (or should be) one of your company’s most important sustainable resources, particularly given today’s business context.

Usually when you think of sustainability, you think of farming or the environment right? Well it’s really not just about what you eat; sustainability is a concept that is at the heart of how the most innovative companies in all industries are doing business today. It involves thinking about how to make the most of your business using the best of your resources and ensuring those resources are well taken of – that is, treated with respect, thoughtfulness and appreciation – whether those resources are money, time, or customers. And it makes sense that customers are (or should be) one of your company’s most important sustainable resources, particularly given today’s business context.

Communispace is proud to be a 2010 recipient of the ThinkForward™ Award given by the smart folks at Beagle Research. The Beagle Research Group is one of the leading analyst firms focused on customer experience and SocialCRM.  They developed the award to recognize companies that are creating sustainable business support for processes that are, among other things, “more fully engaging customers as full partners in the vendor-customer relationship.”

I think this is a really interesting take on the concept of sustainability in business – customers as a renewable business resource.  According to Beagle Research managing principal, Denis Pombriant: “If you’re in CRM this spells opportunity to re-think some business processes and use social networking to carefully listen to customers as they describe the next important things in their lives…the companies that can best understand existing customer sentiment and unmet needs will be best able to develop products and messages that drive additional sales within their customer bases.”

In explaining why they chose Communispace for this groundbreaking award, Pombriant went on to say: “This pioneer in community driven customer outreach has scores of customer success stories in which companies organized groups of customers to learn about attitudes and unmet needs…Communispace has enabled its clients to zero in on the issues that really matter to their customers at low cost as well as with speed and minimal overhead.” Thanks, Denis! You can read the full report on the Beagle Research website here.

We’d also like to congratulate the other ThinkForward winners: Brainshark, Cloud9 Analytics, iCentera, Kadient, Salesforce.com, Unisfair, and Zuora. We are honored to be in such good company.

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9 April 2010

Data vs. Insight: Make Meaning from What Matters

by Debi Kleiman

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All posts by Debi Kleiman

Thanks to the great folks at Dachis Group for inviting me to guest blog on their Collaboratory. They are doing terrific things for companies interested utilizing social business design to reinvent themselves. Thought maybe Verbatim readers would also enjoy the topic…

There’s too much data. Way too much, and it’s not helpful. There, I said it.

Social media monitoring, web analytics, quantitative market research, trackers, clickthroughs and opens… your ecosystem produces a firehose of data, but not a whole lot of meaning.

Thanks to the great folks at Dachis Group  for inviting me to guest blog on their Collaboratory. They are doing terrific things for companies interested utilizing social business design to reinvent themselves. Thought maybe Verbatim readers would also enjoy the topic…

There’s too much data. Way too much, and it’s not helpful. There, I said it.

Social media monitoring, web analytics, quantitative market research, trackers, clickthroughs and opens… your ecosystem produces a firehose of data, but not a whole lot of meaning.

How about some insight instead? Insight – what we’re really after – can create new businesses, grow existing ones, solve problems, tell stories and deliver real value to your organization. Businesses today are drowning in data and missing real insight. But they don’t have to. The same forces that are converging to bombard us with more data are the same ones that will help us. Customers today want to participate with businesses and brands more than ever before, which creates a real opportunity to use that connection for insight.

It’s great that your customers can give you feedback on products using the ratings and reviews, and being alerted to their dissatisfaction on Twitter is important. But what if I told you that you’re missing the heart of what really matters to your customers? CRM expert Denis Pombriant calls this “CSI approach ” to customer intelligence badly reactionary, and he’s right. How powerful would it be to truly understand your customers in a way that allows you to be relevant to them, right out of the gate?

To read the rest of this post head over to the Dachis Group blog.

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19 January 2010

How to Sell Listening to Your Organization

by Guest Blogger: Joel Rubinson

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First, let me thank Communispace for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I think I’ll ask Diane to return the favor on my blog in the near future.

Now the topic…

People who are involved with listening approaches (mining conversations in blogs, managed communities, etc.) get a little frustrated sometimes; they ask me for guidance of how to sell listening.

First, let me thank Communispace for inviting me to be a guest blogger.  I think I’ll ask Diane to return the favor on my blog in the near future.

Now the topic…

People who are involved with listening approaches (mining conversations in blogs, managed communities, etc.) get a little frustrated sometimes; they ask me for guidance of how to sell listening.

Here is my advice; don’t think of this as research.  Think of it as process reinvention.

For example, consider how an organization might reinvent its innovation process.  How could any informed marketer, when rethinking innovation in an era of social media, NOT integrate listening into the innovation process?  Listening is about hearing what people rather than the marketer wants to talk about, and hearing it in people’s own words.  It’s a window in the mind, heart and emotions of people, one you need to have your nose pressed up against continuously.  Because things change…really fast…giving agile marketers great opportunities leaving traditional marketers wearing the WTF happened look on their faces.

Traditionally, research has been at the fuzzy front end with qual and downstream with volumetric concept or concept/product testing.  Listening is about realizing that things change constantly.  Consumer needs are not linear and scheduled, they change at any time.  If there is no linear process, there is no fuzzy front-END; this is continuous and listening is essential.  Your concept testing must morph into learning experiments instead of magic number idea killers.  If you missed the action standard, learn why.  Is the underlying premise wrong or the idea impractical from a business point of view?  If not, keep working at; if yes, move on.

Now it gets even crazier.  Innovation is not just about creating new “things” with new features.  Brands are experiences and the innovation might come from a connection made via social media.  For Unilever’s Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, the innovation is in the media—creating social media environments, videos, and events that were intended to change people’s concept of beauty in a way that would enhance female self-esteem.  It was a great and innovative thing to do and not a new SKU in sight!

Now if the fuzzy front end is really a continuous backdrop requiring listening, it also means that there is little difference between new product innovation and existing brand sense and respond.  It’s all about a marketer intersecting their assets with emerging needs to serve people—add value to daily human life—who cares if you do that via media, new products, or rethinking your existing brand?  It’s about the need, not your brand management structure.

In an era when 300 million or more are on Facebook, where word of mouth is becoming one of the most trusted sources of advice, and where people love sharing their feelings online in communities, how can a marketer not want to tap into this constant and organic flow of conversations?

IMHO, that’s how you sell listening.

To learn more about how to become an agent of change for your organization regarding listening, come to the ARF’s workshop on Jan 28th in San Francisco, “Putting Listening to Work”.  All attendees will also receive a copy of our just published book, “The ARF Listening Playbook” which contains 35 great success stories that wouldn’t have happened without listening.

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14 January 2010

Cultivating Insight and Innovation… One Adventure at a Time

by Jennifer Adams

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I have a seemingly immodest confession: I was not surprised to win the Communispace Values Award for Adventure last winter. After all, how many people can say they started the previous year literally walking out of their burning home in Boston with just the clothes on their back and their beloved chocolate lab in tow, and ended it 3,000 miles away, living and working in London? From Day 1 to Day 365, it was a year of extreme risk (uprooting a US life and journeying to a new and unknown land) and extreme reward (the immense gratification of helping open a UK office for a globally expanding Communispace)—one which is likely (and in certain ways hopefully) not to be repeated. Indeed, my 2008 was replete with what I would term obvious adventure, the sort that has the subtlety of a sledgehammer… or a reality TV contestant. (Yes, if my 2008 were a person, it’d probably be “The Situation.”)

I have a seemingly immodest confession: I was not surprised to win the Communispace Values Award for Adventure last winter. After all, how many people can say they started the previous year literally walking out of their burning home in Boston with just the clothes on their back and their beloved chocolate lab in tow, and ended it 3,000 miles away, living and working in London? From Day 1 to Day 365, it was a year of extreme risk (uprooting a US life and journeying to a new and unknown land) and extreme reward (the immense gratification of helping open a UK office for a globally expanding Communispace)—one which is likely (and in certain ways hopefully) not to be repeated. Indeed, my 2008 was replete with what I would term obvious adventure, the sort that has the subtlety of a sledgehammer… or a reality TV contestant. (Yes, if my 2008 were a person, it’d probably be “The Situation.”) 

Yet to say I was unsurprised is not to imply that I was not flattered or humbled. If there is one thing Communispace understands at a very visceral level, it’s adventure. I watch with awe everyday as my colleagues take risks, innovate at the speed of light, and push themselves, each other, and our clients to be better, smarter, more connected, more involved. Every day, with passion, dedication, and humor, my colleagues find new ways to unearth game-changing insights for our clients, new ways to move the marketplace to unprecedented heights, and new ways to make the company itself one everyone is proud to be a part of (and you will not meet a prouder bunch!).

But this is not flashy adventure; it is not self-congratulatory; it is not immodest; it is not so glaringly obvious as a burning building or a new London office space. No, adventure at Communispace is so subtle and subterranean at times, so constant and steady, I would liken it to a hot spring, a continuous stream of energy that infuses and seeps warmly into everything Communispace does. Yes, there are occasional geysers: opening up Asia Pacific offices, launching new versions of our community software, being named by Forrester as the Full-Service Market Research Online Community Leader or winning two Forrester Groundswell Awards (that last is not an intentional pun, I swear!). But most of the time, adventure bubbles right beneath the surface in everything my colleagues do: crafting client research agendas, projecting the voice of the customer into a room of executives, writing a whitepaper on what it means to listen, building sophisticated technology infrastructure, participating enthusiastically in company golf outings and The Communispace Follies, and planning for all that 2010 and beyond will bring.

And so, as we usher in a new year, born aloft by these continuous bubbles of adventure, I look forward to passing my fiery torch to one of my amazingly deserved colleagues…to a geyser of applause.

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30 December 2009

Was Ben Franklin an Early American Blogger?

by Mollie Garberg

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All posts by Mollie Garberg

BenFranklinOn my way to a recent conference, a stranger standing next to me in the elevator posed that question to me. Sometimes it’s the off-occurrences in life that stick with you and I’ve been contemplating the question ever since.

I was representing Communispace on a panel at the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative/Marketing Science Institute’s conference on the Emergence and Impact of User-Generated Content. Some of the best academics from across the world were gathering to discuss the collective impact that empowered internet users are having on companies and organizations.

BenFranklinOn my way to a recent conference, a stranger standing next to me in the elevator posed that question to me. Sometimes it’s the off-occurrences in life that stick with you and I’ve been contemplating the question ever since.

I was representing Communispace on a panel at the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative/Marketing Science Institute’s conference on the Emergence and Impact of User-Generated Content. Some of the best academics from across the world were gathering to discuss the collective impact that empowered internet users are having on companies and organizations.

I heard over the course of two days some of the most current thinking on topics like the role online communities play in innovation; the potential for text mining across the web in understanding stock performance; along with the benefits and pitfalls of crowd-sourcing new ideas, just to name a few.

You and I have already heard that we are living in a brave new world of fast, intense, hyper-sharing of information and opinion because of the advent of the internet and social media. But I have to say the excitement at the conference about the potential for better understanding and responding to the needs of consumers, investors, patients…people worldwide was absolutely palpable.

As I think more about it, technology has seemingly always been playing catch up to human expression, whether it was the printing press allowing for an autobiography like Ben Franklin’s to be broadly distributed or YouTube making homemade videos consumable. We now need to not only read text contributions but also evaluate digital images, audio and video that people post to really ‘listen’ to them effectively. We can never stop thinking about the next methods they’ll come up with. 

My initial knee-jerk reaction to the question in the elevator was to laugh but if you think about it in the context of the technology of the time and the innovation in personal expression and message it represented, Ben Franklin may indeed have been our first American blogger.

2 Responses to “Was Ben Franklin an Early American Blogger?”

  1. Tom Summit says:
    December 30, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    I agree with you. Not only is Ben Franklin one of my personal idols, but most certainly Ben Franklin was the original hacker and blogger http://blog.bos.genotrope.com/2007/08/14/ben-franklin-was-a-hacker/

  2. Chuck Katz says:
    January 6, 2010 at 8:55 am

    Very good point! And some have described his aphorisms in “Poor Richard’s Almanack” as the first tweets. Truly an amazing man.

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17 December 2009

The Sandwich Situation

by Julie Wittes Schlack

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Meet the Sandwich GenerationIn both developed and developing countries, birth rates are generally dropping, life expectancies are increasing, the average age at which women have their first child is also increasing, and the needs of the “sandwich generation”—those people concurrently caring for children and elderly parents—are of growing interest to marketers. So when we planned our corporate research agenda at the start of 2009, we thought some exploration as to how this squeezed demographic was thinking and coping could be useful, especially to our clients in financial services, health care, and insurance.

Meet the Sandwich GenerationIn both developed and developing countries, birth rates are generally dropping, life expectancies are increasing, the average age at which women have their first child is also increasing, and the needs of the “sandwich generation”—those people concurrently caring for children and elderly parents—are of growing interest to marketers. So when we planned our corporate research agenda at the start of 2009, we thought some exploration as to how this squeezed demographic was thinking and coping could be useful, especially to our clients in financial services, health care, and insurance.

The personal relevance of this research was also inescapable. As we were beginning, it just so happened that I—a married 55-year-old mother of two who uses hair dye almost as liberally as I use coffee—was moving my elderly mother up from Florida to live closer to us, and also helping out my New York City-dwelling daughter with the security deposit and last month’s rent on her new apartment. And Katrina, my 26-year-old colleague in this research, was spending her weekends completing climbs to the summits of New Hampshire’s White Mountains with her 73-year-old father. I was exploring the sandwich situation from the perspective of a boomer whose children were relying on me less for financial and emotional support as my recently widowed mother’s needs were increasing on both fronts. And Katrina, who was facilitating these community conversations with a compassion and wisdom that took my breath away, was exploring the same set of issues, but from the perspective of a “millennial” (a meaningless moniker, I’ve come to believe) looking to what lay ahead.

I was prepared to hear a lot of stories from our community members similar to my own— stories about financial pressures, guilt, stress, etc. What I was unprepared for was the intimacy of the disclosure about the rewards as well as the challenges of caring for elderly loved ones. Our members opened up their lives and hearts, not just to complain, but to reveal how they feel, who they care for, how they cope, what they need, and what messaging they respond to and recoil from.

Sandwich GenerationWe learned that the sandwich is not a sandwich. The “squeeze” is not exerted or experienced equally. People are not stressed because they’re caring for kids and parents; it’s because they’re caring for parents and in-laws, period. But we also learned that the “burden” carries intrinsic rewards, that caring for elderly relatives yields moral clarity, a sense of purpose, opportunities to teach and model values for their children, and moments of surprising joy. And we were overwhelmed by the unmet needs that surfaced, by the opportunity for brands across industries to provide products and services that help care for aging parents, now and in the future.

But there was also another, unanticipated outcome to this research effort. It not only caused our members to reflect on their own lives and values, but taught us as facilitators something about the power of empathetic collaboration. I brought age, experience, and immediacy to our analysis, but Kat contributed fresh vision, challenging questions, and a young but wise perspective. And as a result, the output of our work was greater than the sum of its parts.

Here at verbatim, we tend to blog a lot about how passionate and committed our community members are (true), how visionary and strategic our clients are (amen), and how powerful and transformative customer-driven insight and innovation can be (hallelujah!). But the humanity and diversity that our facilitation teams bring to our work is every bit as worthy of celebration.

3 Responses to “The Sandwich Situation”

  1. Colleen Finnerty says:
    December 17, 2009 at 3:32 pm

    What a fantastic post Julie! I completely agree.

  2. Ted Morris says:
    December 18, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Julie,
    Nice post – your point about the instrinsic rewards is precisely what we are experiencing. In fact, we are getting to know our elderly parents as they really are, their unvarnished personna if you like. This makes for a much closer bond as we all pass through our respective lifestages. Cheers.

  3. Julie Wittes Schlack says:
    December 21, 2009 at 5:01 am

    Thanks for your comments, Colleen and Ted. And Ted, your point about getting to know one’s parents in new, less mediated ways, really resonated with me. While grueling, these years are also a real gift.

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4 December 2009

Market Research and the Transformative Power of Listening

by James Bailey

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All posts by James Bailey

Vice President of Research Solutions at Meredith Corporation, and Communispace client, Britta Ware sits down with Charlene Weisler, of Weisler Media to discuss “the role of research, how print and research are evolving, media mix modeling, data matching, trends and predictions, and audience targeting for print”. Through a series of 6 quick interviews, Britta provides a unique perspective on the state of the media and publishing industry (online and print) and how specific research can be used to more effectively target the right audience.

Vice President of Research Solutions at Meredith Corporation, and Communispace client, Britta Ware sits down with Charlene Weisler, of  Weisler Media to discuss “the role of research, how print and research are evolving, media mix modeling, data matching, trends and predictions, and audience targeting for print”. Through a series of 6 quick interviews, Britta provides a unique perspective on the state of the media and publishing industry (online and print) and how specific research can be used to more effectively target the right audience.

In the clip below, Britta talks about how Meredith is harnessing the power of listening deeply to their audience and engaging them to drive innovation and growth in a dynamic and competitive market.  Their private community is part of the mix.


Click here to view the full interview.

You can also read the research paper Britta references here.

2 Responses to “Market Research and the Transformative Power of Listening”

  1. Pollster.com: Market Research Trends for 2010 | Key Concepts Marketing Wisdom says:
    December 6, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    [...] Market Research and the Transformative Power of Listening « Verbatim [...]

  2. My Passion: Seven Tips for Online Retail Marketing | Key Concepts Marketing Wisdom says:
    December 6, 2009 at 11:45 pm

    [...] Market Research and the Transformative Power of Listening « Verbatim [...]

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2 November 2009

Why Being a Market Leader is Both Scary and Fun

by Debi Kleiman

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Wowza, last week was a big week here at Communispace on the awards and recognition front – specifically, Forrester Research published a report naming Communispace a leader in the market research online community space. The report* ranks Communispace tops on all three major dimensions.

Then to top it off, Communispace, together with our wonderful clients, won an unprecedented two Forrester Groundswell Awards – you can read the full nomination stories on our website. Phew, that’s a lot of Forrester Research accolades in one week. And we couldn’t feel more proud, grateful, excited and yes, maybe even a little nervous.

Wowza, last week was a big week here at Communispace on the awards and recognition front – specifically, Forrester Research published a report naming Communispace a leader in the market research online community space. The report* ranks Communispace tops on all three major dimensions.

Then to top it off, Communispace, together with our wonderful clients, won an unprecedented two Forrester Groundswell Awards – you can read the full nomination stories on our website. Phew, that’s a lot of Forrester Research accolades in one week. And we couldn’t feel more proud, grateful, excited and yes, maybe even a little nervous.

Yes, nervous. When you are the market leader, you have competitors who want to knock you down, so you can’t rest on your laurels.  And you also have clients (or customers, or partners) who want to know what’s next and how you are going to be even better than before. And let’s face it, we’re a pretty driven and curious group here at Communispace too, so we’re putting pressure on ourselves and each other to “take it up a notch”. Definitely fun, especially given our love for pushing into new frontiers, but we could also find out some new stuff that maybe doesn’t jive with what we know today.  We’ll have to take a hard look at our resources, people, and capabilities to see what’s going to propel us forward and what’s dragging us down.

We’ve reached an exciting point in our company’s growth, it’s great to see all that we’ve accomplished in this young market space.  And the experience of getting here provides the fuel to turbo charge what’s next – but now we’ve got to crank it up even more than before. How do you keep the innovation fires burning in your organization? I’d love to hear your ideas.

* The Forrester WaveTM: Full-Service Market Research Online Community (MROC) Vendors, Q4 2009.

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26 October 2009

Reflections from PopTech on Scaling Change

by Bill Alberti

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All posts by Bill Alberti

I’m back in the office today after four inspiring days at PopTech. For those who don’t know or haven’t been, PopTech is an assembly of some of the leading minds driving change around the world… assembled together in Camden, Maine for four days of immersive sharing, learning, and connecting. From musicians to artists, to educators and scientists, to behavioral economists and journalists, to the experimental mayor of Braddock, Penn., all of the presenters are pushing the boundaries of their respective disciplines in new and creative ways. These are truly some of the most brilliant people in the world doing some of the most important work on the planet. I was humbled to be sitting anywhere near them.

I’m back in the office today after four inspiring days at PopTech. For those who don’t know or haven’t been, PopTech is an assembly of some of the leading minds driving change around the world… assembled together in Camden, Maine for four days of immersive sharing, learning, and connecting. From musicians to artists, to educators and scientists, to behavioral economists and journalists, to the experimental mayor of Braddock, Penn., all of the presenters are pushing the boundaries of their respective disciplines in new and creative ways. These are truly some of the most brilliant people in the world doing some of the most important work on the planet. I was humbled to be sitting anywhere near them.

As the conference went along, I kept coming back to a fairly simple question, “Are we innovating for the needs of the environment, business, art, public policy, etc., or are we innovating for the needs of human beings?” One could argue that the two are one and the same. But to me, the former requires a deep knowledge of the issue and a creative approach to its challenges. The latter—innovating for the needs of human beings—requires a deeper understanding of us. Of what it will take to get people—real human beings—and in many cases, lots of them—to change.

All of the presenters’ brilliant work requires us to change. To change our perspectives, to change our beliefs of what is possible, to change our behaviors. And it’s tough to get us to change. We go for the default option. And too often the default, seemingly innocuous choices we make carry with them terrible repercussions.

Many of the PopTech presenters shared alarming statistics detailing some of these repercussions. Did you know:

  • It takes 700 gallons of water to make one cotton T-shirt? 
  • 150K Cattle produce as much waste (untreated) as the population of Chicago? 
  • Education employs 100K people in California, only 40% of whom are teachers?
  • A vegan in a Hummer has a smaller carbon footprint than a meat eater in a Prius?
  • When high school students get less than 8 hours of sleep their rate of depression doubles?
  • Cardiovascular disease kills more people in the U.S. than all other diseases put together… yet 95% of cardiovascular disease is preventable?

But if you only experience an issue in statistics, it’s impossible to engage in it. It’s impossible to feel it. Few have changed as the result of a statistic. 

Rather, it’s emotion that creates action. We are not rational beings that see a better alternative and naturally adopt it. We make bad choices, we behave irrationally (even predictably so as Dan Ariely suggests), we don’t feel the personal imperative or benefit to change and so we don’t change. 

While I am truly inspired by what I heard and experienced at PopTech, I am also struck by how much change is required for many of the proposed solutions to scale. I’m worried that many of the solutions won’t become realized as they don’t fully account for the alternative, the default, the subconscious choices we make every day.

Perhaps then, the biggest challenge is to better understand human beings. To understand not only that people need to change, but how they will or why they won’t.

7 Responses to “Reflections from PopTech on Scaling Change”

  1. Nelson Merchan-Cely says:
    October 27, 2009 at 12:00 am

    As a free lance writer for the Hispanic community in the Treasure Coast, FL with three different columns, Opinion 700 words, In Spanish and Art & Culture 1.500 in El Hispano, a 45.000 issues weekly newspaper, I am ready to promote what I consider good for our community.

    So please e-mail what you know about the subject and I will be very pleased to translate and let them know what is best for them to do.

    By the way that’s what I normaly do, but with your ideas and knowledge they will learn many more things they are not aware of happen in this universe.

    God bless.

    Nelson

  2. Nelson Merchan-Cely says:
    October 27, 2009 at 12:04 am

    Your cooperation is very much appreciated.
    Being in contact with so many intelligent people, through you, I can help my community more positively.

  3. Halley Suitt says:
    October 27, 2009 at 5:59 am

    Very interesting piece and I particularly like what you say at the end, “Perhaps then, the biggest challenge is to better understand human beings. To understand not only that people need to change, but how they will or why they won’t.”

    Another great conference like PopTech is TED. I hope PopTech is presenting their speakers on video the way TED has been doing for a few years. This will help solve the need you mention — the need for change. Getting all these great ideas out there on YouTube is a great way to make people think and change.

    Here’s a link to Will Wright at TED showing his game SPORE which will help us play out scenarios on fictional planets where global warming or other environmental issues happen in minutes instead of centuries. I’ll bet you’ve seen it already. Not only does it help us understand human beings, it lets you build them, and then see how their changing planet affects and changes them.

  4. Halley Suitt says:
    October 27, 2009 at 6:05 am

    Whoops — that link didn’t show up.

    Here’s the link again:

  5. J A Ginsburg says:
    October 27, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Hello Bill,

    I was at PopTech, too, and, like you, have been typing away, trying to figure out what just happened! As I began to reflect, several themes began to emerge. In terms of scalability, there were several ideas I think could be able to go the distance and really begin to move the dial re climate change. I know that’s only one of many issues, but it’s a pretty key one. Anyway, just in case you’re interested in my PopTech 2009 Take-Aways… http://tinyurl.com/yztuso2

  6. Bill Alberti says:
    October 27, 2009 at 11:59 am

    J A,

    Read your blog post. Great detail and distillation of it all. Still intellectually recovering from all that happened at PopTech and your post made the memories rush back over me.

    To your theme in your post, “The most effective way to trigger change is to provide a better alternative to the status quo.” In theory, I totally agree and there were great alternatives presented. I just worry that a better way won’t catch on unless people don’t just rationally process it as better, but emotionally experience why they need to change. Remember Chris Jordan’s photo diary of birds dying on Midway Atoll? http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11 It made me (and I think lots of others) FEEL the need to be less wasteful…to emotionally experience what has always been a rational argument (i.e., recycle, consume less, etc.) If we can’t figure out how to get people to emotionally experience the need, I worry that people won’t act en masse…

    -Bill

  7. J A Ginsburg says:
    November 1, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Hi Bill,

    Sorry it’s taken a few days to respond – I caught a cold I’m fairly sure on the plane home…

    I think we’re actually in agreement. Part and parcel of “a better way” is to engage on an emotional as well as a rational level – to spark imagination and hope.

    The latter is in all too short supply. Not only are the issues braided and overwhelming, but getting more urgent by the day.

    It’s funny that you mention Chris Jordan’s photographs of the “dead-by-plastic” albatross chicks on Midway Atoll. That presentation really stuck with me as well. I just put together a grouping of about a dozen on the aggregator, http://www.TrackerNews,net, anchored by his slide show. (TrackerNews is a bit unusual – links are grouped for contextual relevance, so research papers next to news stories next to videos next to websites, etc. – The site changes regularly, so in a few days, that link will take you to a very different page! But everything goes into a searchable database. There is actually a lot more going on with the site, but the surface is fun…).

    I was really surprised to learn that in the first decade of the 21st century, as much plastic will have been produced as in the entire 20th century. Less wasteful won’t even get us back to square one.

    On the encouraging side, there are some very intrepid marine biologists working on schemes to clean up and recycle and mess. I am in awe…

    - Janet

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